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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25040755">Collarbone</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass'>Eatgreass</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Statement fics [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Horror, Gen, Gore, No beta we die like archival assistants, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), im examining my own relationship to skin thank you</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 09:32:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,256</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25040755</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Statement of Julie Conner, regarding a rather... intense sunburn she experienced in the summer of July 2020.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Statement fics [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814887</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Collarbone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I think the flesh is the most terrifying entity.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I wouldn’t say I'm afraid of skin, perhaps, but it’s discomforting. Whenever I mention that particular fact about me to people, they find it odd that somebody could think that what we have wrapped around ourselves, covering our brain, our heart, our lungs to be so, well, so icky. Perhaps it’s the dysphoria. I’ve never had a great relationship with my body, so it’s understandable that others find my disgust to be weird. But other than I really don’t think about it much, I just live my life as normal, and I only feel the worms crawling under my skin occasionally.</p><p><br/>
But last month I got horribly sunburnt. The kind of awful burn that sticks around for weeks and doesn't leave your skin to peel, just to ache with every movement you make, and scream out when it’s so much as brushed. An annoyance to be sure, and my friends had to put up with me bemoaning my misfortune for those weeks, but nothing terrible, right? Nothing supernatural. I continued living as normal for those weeks. Perhaps I was more careful when going outside, I certainly remembered sunscreen much more often than before, but since I work an office job, accounting and whatnot, it’s not like I had much time to be outside anyway.</p><p><br/>
One Friday after work, my father picked me up, since we had decided that he could teach me how to kiteboard that afternoon, something I wasn’t particularly looking forward to, so I had brought my roller skates in case I wanted to leave early, and could leave my father with the one car. I didn’t really want to go kiting, to tell you the truth but, well- it was one of my father’s greatest pleasures, and one of his only hobbies at that. He had spent, I don’t know, near five hundred dollars on the kite that he was teaching me on, so I felt the need to show at least some interest in the sport. About an hour after we started, I got frustrated, being unable to keep the kite in the air for more than a couple seconds, and whenever I did keep it in up, it would lift me off the ground and my father would all but drag me back down, to keep me from flying ten feet or more in the air. I’m ninety pounds, you see, so a light breeze could blow me away, even if I wasn't attached to a thirteen foot wide kite. I thought roller skating was like flying, but turns out flying is much less enjoyable, especially when one has a large, sweaty man dragging you back down to earth because if you fly away you “Might ruin the kite”.</p><p><br/>
Ah, well I’m getting off topic. The upshot of that was that I ended up roller skating back to my apartment a couple hours before my father was ready to quit kiting, and so I ended up skating the seven miles back to my apartment. It started off rough. I hit a patch of gravel and went flying face-first into the concrete, but after deciding never again to skate full speed into gravel, I was back on my merry way. And all was well after that. Mostly. Until I began to feel large pustules appearing on the back of my neck, right where the sunburn had previously been. At first I dismissed it as the final stage of the sunburn, the skin peeling and all that. And I guess that’s what it was, in the beginning. As I ran my fingers lightly over the skin, it broke, and yellow-green pus oozed out of the back of my neck. And that’s when the itching started. At first, it was light. As if the pain had finally turned to itch, like a bee sting after a few days. Then, the itching became more insistent, and I felt like there was something I needed to claw out of my skin. It was itching inward, towards the muscle, towards the sinew, towards the bone. I couldn't reach the back of my neck while skating, so I all but collapsed against the wall of a building on the side of the road. I didn’t know anything except for that I had to scratch that itch. I didn’t know what was underneath my skin. I don’t think there was anything under my skin, now that I’m looking back, just the corrupted nature of my own bones felt like it was rebelling against me.</p><p><br/>
I sat there for what I felt like was hours, desperately scratching the itch that I just had to get rid of. I picked deeper and deeper into my own skin, trying to pull it out, whatever “it” was. It was a thirst, a need, a demented addiction. I had to find what was under my skin, making it burn and itch with that insatiable itch I just couldn't scratch. And I finally found it,not knowing what It was, when I hit something solid underneath the nuisance that was my own flesh. I reached in and pinched it, and slowly pulled it out. It was a bone. My collarbone, to be more specific. I don’t know if I screamed. I very well might have, because what I hadn’t been aware of in my frenzy to get rid of that awful itch, was the blood and sinew I was scratching through. I thought it was sweat, or pus, and it surely was both of those things, but it was also blood. Green, gray, red, blood, sticky in the july heat, my own bone dripping with this disgusting mixture of ooze.</p><p><br/>
I didn’t know what to do then. There's not exactly a manual for what to do when you pull your own bone out of your flesh. The itching was finally gone though, so without any clue of what was to happen next, I stuck the bloody bone in my bag, and continued skating the last five miles to my apartment. Maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Maybe I should have called an ambulance, or someone to pick me up, but it wasn’t like I had pulled out anything important. After all, I could still roller skate, and that’s all that mattered.</p><p><br/>
I went to bed after I got home. I didn’t want to deal with the blood, or the mess, or my missing collarbone, so I went to sleep. I could have dismissed it as a hazy fever dream, and nearly did, as I woke up bathed in my own putrid sweat, with none of the blood and gore staining my skin and sheets. But there are two things that make me certain that the experience was real. One, If I prod my flesh, there’s not a bone there anymore. The skin where I should have a collarbone has gone limp, and there’s much more skin then there should be. Two, I found the bone in my knapsack, coated in dried blood, the only blood left from the experience, which I’ve washed off. I’ve, um, I’ve left the bone along with my statement.</p><p><br/>
I’m still not afraid of skin- how can you be afraid of something that surrounds you, envelops you? But I have taken to always wearing sunscreen whenever I go out. And sometimes, I see someone else that looks like they have a bone missing, and I have to resist the urge to run up to them and ask who took it, and stifle the urge to vomit in equal measure.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My skin hasn't stopped aching after that sunburn, thank you very much. </p><p>This is actually my first fiction piece I've ever written, since I've found that the best way for me to explore my own phobias is to write about them. That said, I have no idea how to actually tag and put a fic on ao3, nor do I have any idea how to write fiction in the first place, so if you know anything about either of those things, input would be much appreciated.</p><p>My tumblr is @eatgreass if anyone wants to tell me how to add paragraph breaks on ao3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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